Silly bunnies and other fluff

April 2006

One thing I've been trying to do lately is get back into rough animation after years of doing very tight, very detailed feature -animation style clean up drawings . I'm trying to loosen up and think : "expression" , "movement" , "inner forces" , etc. and not get so wrapped up in doing a pretty drawing, with a slick clean up line, even apart from animation tests, in my character designs and misc. sketches. (there's always time to clean it up pretty later on). Let me tell you: it's hard breaking those habits that one acquires as a clean up artist . The little self-censor comes on in my head and says: "not good enough" , "not tied-down enough" , "not original enough" , but then I remember why I started this thing : to post my silly little doodles just for the fun of it . No pressure to perform, no pressure to do a "perfect" drawing . So, anyway, this one captured some of the intensity of expression that I was going for. I sort of liked how it turned out (even though I noodled the color washes too much) Hope you do , too , if you're reading this blog.

"As good as other facial expression books have been in the past, my onecomplaint with all of them has been that they don't feel genuine. Theyaren't real expressions. It's people off the street approximating whatan angry or surprised look is. They also don't take into considerationbody language. (I guess that's two complaints - sorry I miscounted.)Where this book has the advantage over the others, is that the photosare of trained actors: Rosie Perez, Hume Cronyn, James Cromwell, JasonAlexander, to name a few. And the expressions are set up more likescenes. The actor wasn't told, "Look angry! Now infuriated!! Okay, nowgive me bashful." Instead the director said, "You are a man who hasjust been told he has inoperable cancer." or "You are a devoted fatherwatching your handicapped daughter receive her high-school diploma."

The results are incredible."

The book sounds like a super resource for any student of character animation . (anything to make animators look further afield for fresh, authentic expressions and not recycle that same ol' "furrowed-eyebrows-and-pouty-lip" thing and stuff like that which we've seen ad nauseum ad infinitum ... and I include myself as the chief of sinners in that regard)